


The Scorpion Turned

by Baixue1988



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Alternate Ending, Commissioned fic, F/M, I'm not sure how else to tag this, unexpected dick grabs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 22:04:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20682659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baixue1988/pseuds/Baixue1988
Summary: A fic commission from captainalbertwesker.tumblr.comChristine agrees to marry the Phantom and live in his house beneath the Opera. Married life isn't exactly what she expected.





	The Scorpion Turned

She has no idea what has become of Raoul. That is one question which Erik refuses to answer.

She begs. Then rages.

It is all met with absolute silence.

When she pounds her little fists against his skeletal chest, he takes her wrists in his dead, bony hands and firmly – but gently – pushes her down into a chair.

“You are my wife now,” he says then. “there’s no need to worry about _other men_.”

The calm in his voice makes her want to scream.

She doesn’t. Instead she just sits there and stares hard at his shiny dress shoes. After a few moments of silence, he awkwardly turns and retreats to his room without saying a word to her.

She’s not sure what has become of the Persian, either – or the Daroga, as Erik calls him. The familiarity between the two is yet another puzzle she can’t unwind, but that’s hardly the most important thing on her mind right now.

All in all, she’s exhausted with puzzles, with games, with teasing. She’s aged ten years in a matter of days, and her patience is all gone. But it all catches up to her that night, and when she at last curls up in her bed, she is greeted by a deep and dreamless sleep.

\--

It is only the next morning when she wakes up that she realises her wedding night has come and gone with no further sign of the groom.

“How strange,” she murmurs to herself. “After all he’s done, why not _that_, too?”

But, then again, perhaps after all he really is determined to keep his promise not to hurt her – physically, that is.

\--

The silence quickly becomes oppressive. It isn’t like the silence at home with Mamma Valerius. One could always hear the creak of the old woman’s rocking chair, or her soft snores, or the servants at work downstairs in the kitchen, or the rumble of coaches and murmur of pedestrians on the street outside. Here the silence is like death – and indeed, she is buried along with Erik in his tomb, deep beneath the Palais Garnier.

Erik is done with his composing, it seems (perhaps forever), and she cannot hear anyone – or anything – moving through the little underground house. Maybe he’s still in bed, too, encased in that horrible, gaudy coffin of his.

She wonders if he snores when he sleeps.

She wonders if Raoul does.

She wonders how different her wedding night may have been if their plan had worked, and it had been her beloved Raoul who married her last night.

She wonders, and not for the first time, what it is like to be touched.

Oh, men have touched her before, of course – or at least Raoul has. But not like _that_. Not in the way a husband touches his wife. Raoul was always so discreet and respectful, even though she could see the impatience and need burning in his eyes when she modestly pulled away from the kisses that occasionally got a touch too deep, or the embraces that lasted a touch too long.

Oh, she is a good Catholic girl, of course.

But she burns, too – and here she is, the morning after her wedding night, alone in a cold tomb!

If he’s going to force her to marry him, to spend the rest of her life in this living death, couldn’t he at least do her the decency of violating her like the villain he’s apparently decided to be?

“That’s a sign the silence is getting to you already,” Christine chides herself almost the moment the thought goes through her head. “What’s wrong with you, thinking such things?”

\--

Her stomach growls, and it occurs to her that it’s been ages since she last ate anything – not that she’s been terribly hungry with everything that’s been going on. But she can’t let herself starve, not if she’s going to find out what’s happened to Raoul.

Christine gets out of bed and pads to the door. She peeks out of it before going out into the main room, which is as still and perfect as a funeral home.

She begins searching beyond the sitting room. He always provided her with meals without telling her how he procured them, but now she finds that there is nothing resembling a pantry, much less a kitchen – at least not anything she can find.

She’s becoming hungrier. And irritable.

\--

Finally, she can’t take it any longer. She goes to Erik’s door, raises her hand to knock, and then decides that he hasn’t earned it. She opens the door so hard that it slams against the garish wall.

Erik sits up in his horrible coffin-bed, startled.

“Christine?” he croaks out in surprise.

“How long am I to wait for breakfast?” she asks. Any other day she’d be shocked at the imperious tone of her voice, but she’s already had quite enough of just about everything, and it isn’t even ten in the morning.

“Oh,” Erik groans as he realises. “Oh, forgive me, Christine, I had quite forgotten!” He climbs from his coffin like a daddy long-legs. “I’m so terribly sorry. How selfish of me!”

She is repulsed. Not by his appearance, but by his fawning. How can he, after all he’s done? And how can he expect her to have anything like patience for him?

“Stop,” she says firmly. “I don’t want any of your…your _manipulations_, Erik. I just want to eat.”

And just like that, he shuts up. He straightens up and politely passes her with the air of a child caught fibbing. Like a dog with its tail between its legs, he disappears into some side-room. A few minutes later he reappears with some biscuits and tea.

“I haven’t been shopping,” he says, the apologetic tone not quite having left his voice. “I’m afraid this is all I have at the moment. I’ll put on my nose and go today.”

Christine sits at the table and begins eating with relish. After a moment, Erik sits, too, and watches her with the impassive quiet she’s come to expect from him.

“I’m going to need a kitchen if I’m going to live here,” Christine says after she gulps down some tea.

“I haven’t got a kitchen,” Erik says lamely.

“Then how am I to eat? You can’t always get me meals from outside, surely.”

He drums his bone-like fingers on the tabletop, considering.

“I haven’t got the room,” he finally says.

“Make room. You won’t be needing that horrible torture chamber any longer.”

Erik opens his mouth to object, but she gives him a withering stare.

“Christine,” he attempts after a few moments. “You really must give me time to adjust. I’m not used to having a wife, you know.”

“But surely you were prepared for what that would entail,” Christine says in surprise.

Like a kitchen.

(Or a wedding night.)

“Well,” he says helplessly, then drifts off, looking sheepish.

She stares at him in horror. “You expected me to turn the grasshopper. All this time, you were expecting me to blow us all up!”

“It’s what _I_ would have done,” he murmurs.

She isn’t sure what to feel then. Pity, horror, loathing: all run through her like freezing water.

“So what happens now?” she asks in a hollow whisper.

Erik shrugs helplessly. “In all honesty, my dearest, I never thought I’d get this far,” he admits.

Christine looks at him in disbelief, and then throws her hands in the air in exasperation. “Really, Erik!” she exclaims, because she can think of nothing else to say.

He shrugs again, looking down at the tablecloth.

“Did you ever even want me?” she asks. “Or did you just want to win?”

She can feel his burning eyes snap up to fix on her.

“No!” he gasps out in shock. “Oh, no, Christine, never! You know how much I adore-!”

“Stop.” She holds up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. You’re full of words, Erik, but you make a terrible Hades. It’s just play-acting for you, isn’t it? You don’t even have the spine to actually rape your Persephone!”

She feels blood rush to her face as soon as she says it, but she folds her arms and glares at him, hiding it.

Erik, meanwhile, has gone as still as a statue. It’s impossible to read the emotions of his death’s-head face.

At last, after the silence feels as if it will nearly crush her, he takes a deep breath and speaks: “I can’t.”

“What?”

“I can’t. I haven’t ever….”

“And that’s all that’s stopping you?”

He tilts his head slightly. “Do _you_ want me to?”

It’s her turn to be speechless.

“No,” she splutters once she regains some control over her mouth. “No, of course not. But you’re supposed to. That’s how it is in all the stories.”

“All the _operas_?” he asks, and she can hear the sneer in his voice.

“Yes,” she replies in a small voice.

“Well, my dear, I’m afraid I’m as ill-equipped as you are. And just as virginal.”

“Ill-equipped? You haven’t got-?”

“I have, I just….” He looks distinctly uncomfortable.

“Let’s see it, then.”

The old Christine would have been shocked, but this new Christine is quite angry and bitter and vile, and damn it, if he’s going to punish her like this, then she’ll punish him, too.

But then those deep-set eyes of his flash in rage, and he stands. After a bit of fumbling with his trousers, he yanks them down.

Christine sucks in a breath.

It’s not the sight of his member which horrifies her. That part, oddly enough, is probably the only normal thing about him, and she has seen statues before, after all, and the occasional obscene photographs. But it’s the thighs and pelvis that horrify her, though by now they shouldn’t. They’re just as skeletal as the rest of him, and the hollows of his hips go so deep she’s sure she can nearly see the joints.

“Well?” Erik’s voice is venomous. “Is _this_ what you expected, dear Christine? My rod isn’t ill-equipped, it’s the rest of me. It would make any woman shudder to see this body coming towards them, even the most jaded whore. And of course, poor little Christine….”

The sneer in his tone brings her back to herself, and in response she reaches out and grabs his member with one small, clumsy hand. It almost slips from her grasp, but she grips on tight and holds.

Erik’s mocking words die on his non-lips, and wither away into a whimper and a moan.

Christine forces herself to look up into his glowing embers.

“Is this what you want?”

He mouths something but doesn’t succeed at saying anything audible.

The member is as cold and clammy as the rest of him, and when she grabs it, it’s soft. But as he stands there gaping at her like a dead fish, it begins to grow slightly harder – and warmer.

“Isn’t this what you’ve always dreamed of, Erik? Me, touching you without fear?” Her hand slides down the shaft slightly, and it twitches beneath her palm.

“Christine,” he manages after a moment, but can’t seem to get anything else out.

“Well?” she presses. “Isn’t _this_ what you wanted me for? Answer me, Erik!”

By now, his manhood is rigid, and he is shaking like a leaf. At last, he lets out a loud cry like a damned soul, and with a surprising strength slaps her hand away.

She lurches backwards, clutching one smarting hand in the other, and watches with wide eyes as he turns and runs into his bedroom. The door slams so violently behind him that a framed picture falls from the wall and the glass cracks.

Christine looks back down at her tea. She reaches out to pick up a biscuit, but then remembers where her hand has been. So she goes into her bathroom and runs it under hot water, scrubbing until it’s bright, violent red.


End file.
